Video Blog Wednesday

Not the Owls. That would be Sheffield Wednesday. But rather, not a weekly video post, but a video post none the less. I’ve got to get back into editing. I feel so rusty. I hope this doesn’t qualify as total shite.

Anyhow, I compiled these bits of footage of Dawn and my trip up the Sea to Sky Highway on Sunday, going up to Whistler and back.

Enjoy.

That is all.

P.S. Yayayayay! WordPress now lets us embed YouTube!

What on Earth are they trying to hide?

Now being fully away from the big blue box for a few days now, I can more clearly reflect upon the eight months of a living nightmare which was wearing smurf blue while hocking Best Buy’s wares, accessories and service plan. Some of this may be repetitive, but I must give one last vent before being able to put the matter to rest.

If you ever watch the commercial for the store, you will notice that it ALWAYS has the text NO COMMISSION, NO PRESSURE in a screen all by itself. Now I always wonder why a non-commission retail store has to advertise, ad naseum, as to why they don’t give commissions to their staff. Now fair enough, electronics is a very competitive arena, with many commission based retailers out there, but I shall raise this as a comparison. Wal-Mart. Yes, Wal-Mart. Obviously NOT a commission based retailer, and if you notice any of their advertisements, they DO NOT bombard you with that knowledge. Why is that? Wal-Mart operates on one simple principle. Volume. Sell a lot, make a lot. Best Buy, on the other hand, has thin profit margins unless you buy accessories and Performance Service Plan, or PSP. By not paying it’s employees commission, they can legally go around saying it, and thusly lower your defenses as a consumer so that you buy all their wares, at the cost of your pocketbook. But to think nobody makes commission at Best Buy is a slanted view at best (or worst). Supervisors and managers do recieve bonuses based on the store’s overall performance, though not entirely based on sales revenues and profit margins. So it is fair to say that supervisors and managers, who drive performance and numbers from their non-commission, underpaid salaried employees, have a stake in the game in a commission style basis.

STRIKE ONE

Best Buy promotes, at least from within, that they are a customer-centric retailer. Walk into a Best Buy store. All the employees wear a black pin with the phrase Customers First on it. However, the first part is actually an acronym. You as a customer are not first. Your wallet is. The “first” protocol is designed to make you more likely to purchase that day, as well as increase the average revenue taken in from your sale. But it doesn’t stop there. Everything is an acronym. Everything from shrinkage to inventory to sales all has an acronym (several in some instances) to define the protocol. Most employees can recite the acronym verbatim, as managers run around with clipboards all day, quizzing employees, and if they pass, they get a candy or a sweet (nothing like treating smurf blue dressed people as pets). But the sad thing is that the employees do little or nothing in actual action to live up to said protocols or values.

What is even more sad is that little to none of the employees know anything about the products either. Working in home theatre, it had become common practice to sell surge protection to people in order to clean up the fuzz created when you watch a standard definition television signal on a high definition set. For those technically challenged, it just can’t happen. There’s no quick fix. You must get high definition programming for your set. But alas, in this last ditch effort to attach something, the “average” sales associate will sell the filtering power bar to get some revenue, not to help the customer. Seems the customer is not first in the English language version of first, but rather F.I.R.S.T., in the Best Buy newspeak version. The more I look at it, the more Orwellian the retailer seems.

STRIKE TWO

Just like any other retailer, Best Buy’s long term success is in having repeat customers. So, as many retailers do now, they have a loyalty survey, to which if customers participate, they may win a $500 gift card for having done so. Well, this in one instance became an achilles heel for my dark time in hell. With a high level of employee pressure to sell accessories and PSP, it rubbed off on the odd customer the wrong way. One in particular decided to write a four page complaint about how I used tactics (to which I was asked to) to pressure them into buying things they didn’t want, to which I nearly got written up for. Talk about entrapment.

But this last strike (this strike analogy shouldn’t be a surprise now) isn’t about that comment. Rather, just like the “loyalty” survey, employees twice a year get to participate in a “viewpoint” survey. Most stores, prior to the survey, tend to spend money on cool things, like barbeques and movie nights, to guilt the employees into giving the managers a high score. If it weren’t for my damn morals on two questions, I would have scored the store all ones (the worst possible store). But in the comments section, I had only 500 characters to create a comment with. That lady who complained about me gets four pages, and I get 500 characters.

Talk about censorship.

STRIKE THREE

So concludes my litany of misrepresented non-commission retail, the Orwellian newspeak conundrum, and censorship of a supposedly open environment. Though I will say these fuckers are right desperate. In my last few days before leaving, the managers were making last ditch efforts to take my quitting from a full quit to a “leave of absence.” Not that I’m coming back. Aside from my aforementioned and obvious beefs, once the film season dies down and work becomes sparse, I fully intend to have my traffic control and first aid tickets, so instead of making under $10 per hour in the off season, I can make $15-20 easily. Will these gits ever take no for an answer? They can’t win this fight.

And it is with this I end my condition as a Best Buy employee.

That is all.